


Crosswind

by IndianSummer13



Series: Picket Fences [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Feels, Reference to Past Miscarriage, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 11:32:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13247361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndianSummer13/pseuds/IndianSummer13
Summary: He finds her staring into the mirror in the bathroom. Her eyes are glassy and unfocused but she doesn't cry. Her fingers are gripping onto the sink so hard that her knuckles are white. Gently, one by one, he massages them until they unclench and he can sew them in with his, relief flooding his veins when there's no trail of red transferred to his palm.Or, Jughead suggests they try again.





	Crosswind

**Author's Note:**

> This piece follows on from Anchor, though it's not essential that you read that one prior to this. It might help though.

His lips sink to her neck, warm and wet when he utters the words against her skin. "I want a baby with you."

She stills on top of him, her hips faltering in their frantic rocking against his as the words spray into the air like rapid gunfire. Six words. Six bullets.

And every single one of them strikes her in the chest.

When she chances a look at him, his eyes are soft, edged with hope that makes a lump form in her throat, threatening to choke her. Jughead's fingers circle around the gold band on her fourth finger. "We said we'd try Betts."

_No_ , she thinks. She never agreed to _this_ , never agreed that she'd allow her heart to be ripped apart again. She shakes her head and climbs off of him.

"We have to try," he says gently, no real hesitancy there - just some stupid notion of blind faith whose origin Betty has no clue.

"Last time-" she begins, but abruptly stops at the flash of images: that blinding pain as she sat at her desk trying to solve that stupid equation; her desperate race to the bathroom at the end of the hall; the heavy thump of her body on the toilet seat.

The baby-shaped lump when she looked down.

"No," she whispers.

He's still sitting on their bed when she leaves the room.

  
  
  
  
Jughead finds her staring into the mirror in the bathroom. Her eyes are glassy and unfocused but she doesn't cry. Her fingers are gripping onto the sink so hard that her knuckles are white.

Gently, one by one, he massages them until they unclench and he can sew them in with his, relief flooding his veins when there's no trail of red transferred to his palm. Her body sags against his chest, shoulders dropping and head listing. He inhales her scent from the crook of her neck and then exhales with a press of his lips to her skin.

"It won't be like that," he breathes into her ear, those telltale goosebumps of hers rising with the hairs on her arms.

"You don't know that."

"I do," he says. "It'll be different this time."

Betty shakes her head again. "I can't, Jug."  
  
  


  
It happens by accident.

They go to dinner at a little tapas place she's been wanting to try for ages, has been saving for a special occasion. He books the table as a surprise on her birthday, one she'd planned on spending at their apartment in Clinton Hill, snuggled up on the couch with some tom yum goong and fried rice.

"Wear that one," he tells her with a slight smirk, nodding towards the red sundress with little buttons down the front. She makes a show of putting it on, careful to make sure he knows she's not wearing underwear (the material's too thin for panties).

He groans when he runs his hands over her ass and feels the distinct lack of elastic and lace.

They order everything she wants to try plus a carafe of tempranillo and it's delicious.

She eats the chili-garlic prawns before he's even had chance to try one, then smiles guilty as she wipes at the corner of her mouth with the little white napkin. Jughead just grins and tells her he loves her, and there's a warm feeling spreading through her belly that has nothing to do with the wine.

As soon as they get home, he fucks her against the inside of their apartment door, her dress still on.  
  


  
  
Jughead hears her vomiting into the toilet bowl early the next morning. He squints in the sunlight streaming in through the white cotton curtains she'd hung in April, the bottoms of which she'd stitched by hand so they'd graze the wood floor rather than trail over it.

She's on her knees on the bathroom floor and he pulls down a fresh towel from the rail, pushing it under her so she has something more forgiving than the harsh tiles to rest on. Betty reaches her hand behind her, squeezing his in silent thanks before vomiting whatever's left in her stomach out into the bowl.

"I'm okay," she says, meaning _you don't have to stay_ .

"I know," he replies, running the washcloth under the cold tap. He stays anyway.

She spends the morning in bed but by mid-afternoon, she's showered, her face coloured a much more healthy pink than before. He runs a bath just a little after nine and they lie in it together, his fingers massaging her skin in slow, lazy circles that begin on her thighs and then travel to her breasts. He makes her come once around his fingers and then, after they've towelled off, he rocks into her beneath the fresh sheets on their bed.

Neither of them think about the effects of her vomiting on her birth control pills.

Until she’s _late_.

  
  
  


“This is your fault,” she says very quietly as she stares down at the plus sign on each of the four sticks now lined up on the counter, voice teetering on the verge of cracking; eyes on the verge of spilling with tears.

Her hands are balled into tight fists but it’s the pads of her fingers and not her nails pressing against her palms.

She’s being unfair, she knows. The wince Jughead tries to hide reminds her of the fact but she can’t find it in her to apologise. She’d seen the way his eyes had lit up when she’d told him she was late; had sensed the excitement when he paid for the tests at the drug store; had witnessed the corners of his lips crease into a smile at that first plus sign (and then the next and the next and the next).

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against her forehead. He’s on his knees in front of her and when she looks into his eyes, she can see that he really means it.

That’s when she breaks.

Somehow, he must pull her off of the toilet seat and into his chest so he can cradle her, so he can whisper over and over that he loves her.

“We were supposed to be careful,” Betty sobs. “I didn’t want this.”

They both know she doesn’t mean it: she _wants_ it more than anything.

That’s the problem.

  
  
  


She doesn’t acknowledge the life growing inside of her with words. She stops drinking coffee and alcohol and, Jughead notices, there’s a distinct lack of fish in their diet. He assumes the smell must make her stomach turn but through the passing weeks, she says nothing.

One night, he chances the placement of his hand over her stomach. It’s still flat like it’s always been, but right when he closes his eyes, she takes his hand in hers and moves it to her breasts instead.

Usually, he wouldn’t complain. He _doesn’t_ complain.

But tears prick in his eyes and he fights a losing battle against the lump building in his throat.

  
  
  


Betty thinks of the years after _it_. The ones she spent pretending she was fine; never speaking of that day when Veronica found her in the bathroom and had to call for an ambulance; never daring to recall the way Jughead had looked at her in that hospital bed.

It had been easy to ignore under the watchful eye of her mom, who also wanted not to acknowledge what had happened.

She thinks of the years spent apart from Jughead where she’d fought just to remain above water.

And then she thinks of the night he showed up at her door clutching his beanie in his fist and looking as broken as she felt. _“I still love you,”_ he’d said. _“I’ve always loved you.”_

The sonographer calls her name and her legs feel like Jell-o. Jughead’s hand splays across the base of her back, gentle over the soft fabric of her sweater.

“I love you Betts,” he murmurs into her temple, but her mouth won’t work properly to say it back.

  
  
  


The little picture - in all its grainy black-and-white glory - resides in the drawer of the console table by the door. It stays there day after day, night after night and yet Jughead knows she looks at it. Opens the drawer to pull it out, gazing at the tiny shape, tracing its outline when she’s alone and there’s nobody else to see.

He does it too. He waits until she’s in the shower or at the little grocery store on the next block which barely sells more than milk, bread and candy bars, and then he takes out the photo of their baby and just stares.

And then, one Sunday morning when the rain is lashing against the windows and the browning leaves are being whipped into tornadoes by an easterly wind, everything changes.

Betty calls his name and he bolts upright, eyes wide with alarm he can’t control. The expression on her face isn’t one of panic or pain and when he realises that she hasn’t woken him to let him know something’s wrong, relief floods him so quickly that he’s unable to see for a couple seconds. When the haze fades though, what he _can_ see is nothing short of magical.

His girl is standing in front of the white wood-edged mirror with the t-shirt of his that she sleeps in pulled up so it gathers in folds just beneath her breasts.

“Look Juggie,” she whispers, something like awe in her tone. She angles her body slightly and he sees it: the slight swell of her stomach. Her eyes are bright and shining and despite the howling shriek of wind outside, Jughead feels like the storm clouds have lifted.

“Come here,” he says.

She kneels next to him on the bed and he reaches out to her exposed skin, then stops before his fingers touch her.  

“I want you to feel it,” she tells him. So he allows that tiny gap to close, breath catching high in his throat as his fingers stroke her skin slowly, a smile creeping across his lips involuntarily as he brushes the new curve with his thumb.

“You look beautiful Betts.”

She lets him lie there in that bed and just hold her for the rest of the morning.

  
  
  


They have a conversation late at night when snowflakes are falling in thick, heavy flurries outside. She’s wearing an old flannel shirt of his over pajama shorts and he’s looking at her like she’s something he’s never seen before. The emotion in his eyes makes her whole body ache.

“I should’ve seen it,” Jughead says with his adam’s apple bobbing in sorrow. “Last time. I should’ve known.”

“No.” she shakes her head, toying with the hem of his grey t-shirt. “I did _everything_ for you _not_ to see it.”

His voice cracks when he says, “I didn’t do _enough_ to figure it out. I _could’ve_ figured it out.”

Betty knows that. She doesn’t want him to feel sorry for it.

Instead of their usual spooning position, she drapes herself over his chest - despite the awkward angle - so she can hold him as they sleep: she knows he needs it.

  
  
  


In the hospital, the composure he’s kept for the past nine months finally breaks. There’s so much beeping all at once; so much rushing around and wires and movement and….panic, he realises. It’s _panic_ on the doctors’ faces and suddenly, he realises how she must have felt all of those months ago. It seizes him to the point he can’t move; can’t even breathe.

And then he hears Betty’s voice. “It’ll be okay Jug.”

_You can’t know that_ , he wants to say. _You can’t know that._

_You can’t leave me_.

She takes his hand in hers and squeezes. “I promise.”

He wants to shield her from the harsh lighting overhead in the room they wheel her to but in reality, all he can do is make his eyes dart between her face and the activity behind the blue curtain she can’t see. His stomach lurches when the doctor pulls on her.

_Too rough_ , he says silently, over and over. _You’re being too rough with her_.

His world stops when he’s handed their daughter.

  
  
  


She can’t work out whether or not she’s dreaming. She’s groggy and her eyelids are so heavy, but she forces them open again to see the picture in front of her, trying to get the measure of it all.

Jughead’s eyes lock onto hers and she knows straight away from the way he looks at her that this is real. “That’s your mom,” he chokes out to the tiny bundle in his arms. _Their_ tiny bundle, she reminds herself. _Their daughter_. And then there’re his words again. “You should say hi.”

He shifts with such precision and care that Betty’s overwhelmed. Gently, he sits on the edge of the bed and hands the baby to her, his hands cradling her head with its little pink and white striped hat.

 

That anchor she’d felt the last time - that one that had hooked into place when he’d told her he loved her all those years ago - suddenly grows stronger.

She presses a kiss against her tiny fingers. “Hi baby girl.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated


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